Home » Blog » CENSORING – There is plenty of fact-checked information out there for those open to learning.
CENSORING – There is plenty of fact-checked information out there for those open to learning.
Michael Grant White · March 11, 2021 · Last 75 years updated September 8 2023
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say. “~ George R. Martin
” The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. (belief in myths allows us to) enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought” JFK
“As the events of the past few months bear out, true stories and fiction work the same way in our minds. We are beginning to understand that in a world of competing truths, there is a battle to carefully curate those that shape our world.” MGW
The human body is populated by viruses’ and since the beginning of mankind the planet has been overrun by viruses’ – it’s a part of life, it’s how the body – our virus body – learns and survives. We must not resist but allow the human body to learn from each virus so that mankind can quickly adapt and become stronger. Lockdowns weaken us and don’t make us stronger.
CAN WE TAKE A JOKE – A documentary that exposes the USA’s last 80 years of censoring and how it backed off after Lenny Bruce’s death, and how it slowly built back up including on college campuses.
These days we have lock step parroting of censoring by internet tech powers, media and many state, federal (CDC, NIH, ) governments. Our freedom of speech is getting trashed, fast.
MASSAGING COVID-19 MESSAGES
In terms of health, COVID-19 reporting has taken censorship and media manipulation to brand new heights, eclipsing just about all previous efforts. They don’t even hide the bias anymore.
All social media platforms are openly censoring dissenting views about the virus, particularly its origin and treatment. Even well-respected doctors and scientists have been axed for speaking against the desired narrative dictated by the World Health Organization.
August 26, 2020, the CDC had released data3 showing 94% of people who had died during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. died “with” the virus, not “from” it. Only 6% had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate. Hence, the real death toll, those who unarguably died as a direct result of the infection, is only around 10,000.
“For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,” the CDC stated. This is an important distinction. Yet mainstream media continues to report that nearly 200,000 have died “from” COVID-19 in the U.S, thereby increasing national fear so they can implement their lockdowns and other strategies to limit our personal freedoms and liberty.
“I think we need both numbers, in a separate sense, to have perspective and understanding of what’s really happening,” Attkisson says. “And it’s something that very few people have shown interest in … Early on, it was clear … that the primary victims were those with the comorbidities and the elderly population in nursing homes and so on.
But then we sort of lost track of that. And then there seemed to be a propaganda effort to convince people that, initially, after understanding young people were at very little risk of serious illness and death, there seemed to be an effort to convince people that the youth must be very careful. That more young people are dying and getting sick.
I can only guess as to why that’s important to some interests, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that when the vaccine comes out, the market needs to be aimed.
You can’t rule out young people, you must make them believe they need it, or else you’ve ruled out a huge section of the vaccine market. And they certainly don’t want to make a vaccine that’s not used by a giant percentage of the population. I think they have to create a market. Why do I think this?
Well, I was actually told by a top immunization official for the government, when they learned flu shots are ineffective in the elderly … that the way around that was not to take flu shots away from the elderly — who would think that was dishonest because we’ve been telling it was necessary for so many years — but to convince parents to get their children and babies flu shots so that they wouldn’t ‘carry flu to the elderly.’
I remember him saying to me, ‘The trick is going to be to convince parents to give a vaccine to their children who don’t really need it themselves.’ In other words, for a secondary supposed benefit for the elderly. And darn it, if you didn’t see in the next season, they recommended flu shots for babies and children.
And they didn’t tell anybody at the time that they were doing it because flu shots don’t work in the elderly. They just started telling people that your kids need flu shots.”
When a ‘Case’ Is Not a Case
The media are also grossly misusing the term “case,” in reference to the COVID-19 case load. A case is a medical term for a patient with a symptomatic type of infection. It’s not someone who tests positive for antibodies or pieces of viral DNA. By referring to all positive tests as “cases,” they’re able to fan the flames of panic, making the situation sound far worse than it actually is.
We’re at a pretty scary time when scientists who are experts on these issues fear speaking what they believe is the scientific truth because they’ll be controversialized. ~ Sharyl Attkisson
Many still do not understand that most of those who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic. They think these are sick people in the hospital and that rising “case” numbers mean there will be a rise in deaths. Statistics reveal this simply isn’t true, and that there’s not a linear correlation between positive tests and deaths.
“There are just so many things that are misreported,” Attkisson says. “But if you try to report them accurately and factually, you get called out by those in the media who either didn’t understand, or are simply so blinded by the propaganda narrative.
The New York Times did this. They actually called me and several other people out as ‘coronavirus doubters,’ although I had never said or written anything that even remotely denies coronavirus or denies the risk of it. But they were working very hard to silence voices who are simply reporting more accurately and with context on what’s really happening.
By the way, when I spoke to some scientists … and I said, ‘Why don’t you speak out or correct what you think is the misconception?’ Separately, several of them told me they feared speaking out publicly because they were afraid they would be labeled a coronavirus doubter, and for fear of contradicting Dr. Fauci.
So, I said, ‘We’re at a pretty scary time when scientists who are experts on these issues fear speaking what they believe is the scientific truth because they’ll be controversialized.’”
Search for Truth and Unbiased Facts
The clear take-home message I got from reading, “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism,” is that there’s a profoundly serious problem with most mainstream conventional media.
The obvious question is: Where can you go to get the truth? We would like to be informed, but we also want the truth. We don’t have time to waste to be brainwashed by propaganda. At the end of her book, Attkisson lists a variety of sources she’s come to trust. It may be worth getting the book for those recommendations alone.
“I didn’t make a comprehensive list,” Attkisson says. “I’m sure I left many people out, but I tried to point to a few outlets and people, and I consulted some of my colleagues for their recommendations. It’s not an easy answer. There isn’t a place you can go. I can’t say, ‘Watch this news every day or read this publication.’ It’s more granular than that.
You have to find a reporter that you trust on a topic and then chase that reporter around … That’s where I think you can find a segment of truth. And it’s not always, sadly, going to be objective truth.
Some of the reporters I name are coming from the left viewpoint or coming from a right viewpoint, but they have proven themselves to be brave reporters of a particular topic or controversy that I think you can rely on. But it’s just not so simple as it used to be where you could just point to a person or an outlet and say, ‘Watch that, and you’ll get your fair shake at the news’ …
I would say, in closing, that I do think a new paradigm will develop when it comes to news reporting. There are people looking at how news and information can be reported in a way that it cannot be censored by big tech giants, political figures and nonprofits and so on …
I’m told there’s a way to develop a social media platform where you can post freely and also not be subject to censorship. I think things will evolve because people are tired of what they’re seeing. And I hope something really positive, being an optimist, develops out of all of this down the road.”
ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: INT’L. MESSAGE FOR FREEDOM AND HOPE
TRUTH WITH ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. FEATURING NYU PROFESSOR MARK CRISPIN MILLER.
THIS IS HOW BAD CENSORING and LOSS OF FREEDOM CAN GET.
Social Media Dangers Documentary on private server
Unfortunately, the protest reenactment scene from the THE SOCIAL DILEMMA DOCUMENTARY sends the message that all vaccine-related posts — including legitimate posts from parents of vaccine-injured children, citing credible science — belong in the “fake news” category. In reality, thanks to the influence of the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry, any social media post that dares question the safety or efficacy of vaccines, risks being labeled, at worst, “fake news,” and at best “misinformation.” Once that happens, the posts are often hidden from most news feeds.
SOCIAL MEDIA DANGERS DOCUMENTARY ON YOUTUBE IS ABOVE THIS VERSION IN CASE THEY TAKE IT DOWN LIKE THEY HAVE WITH HUNDREDS OF VACCINE BASED CENSORED PAGES.
GETTING MANIPULATED BY IGNORANT CELEBRITIES
I am not a big fan of any kind of politics these days but Tucker Carlson nails it in this 11 minute episode.
MATT TAIBBI Brilliant journalist
BILDERBERG: THE MOVIE
THE BOLEN REPORT I urge you to subscribe
DOCTOR’S OFFICE RAIDED BY FBI FOR USING INTRAVENOUS VITAMIN C
i WAS GIVEN INTRAVENOUS VITAMIN C AS FAR BACK AS 1977 AND MY FLU SYMPTONS VANISHED IN A FEW HOURS.
A Chinese physician reported in mid January 2020 that they were using intravenous vitamin C very successfully. Youtube and Vimeo took the video down.
KENT HECKENLIVELY JD
ROBERT F KENNEDYJR AND DEL BIGTREE DISCUSS BOBBY’S DEBATE WITH ALAN DERSHOWITZ – TAKEN DOWN BY YOUTUBE AND REINSTALLED ON MY PRIVATE SERVER. LLSTEN FOR “VICTIMS OF CENSORSHIP”; “POLITICIZING OF SCIENCE”; “WE CAN WIN WITHOUT THE DEMOCRATS”‘ AND MUCH MORE.
(BELOW THIS VIDEO IS THE ACTUAL DEBATE WITH MY COMMENTS FOLLOWING).
BELOW IS THE ACTUAL DEBATE WITH MY COMMENTS BELOW THE VIDEO. WATCH THE JULY 2020 ROBERT KENNEDY JR AND ALAN DERSCHOWITZ DEBATE
Toward the end at 1:03:32 you will learn something VERY definitive about respiratory infections. “‘FLU VACCINE INCREASES NON-FLU VIRAL UPPER RESPIRATORY INFECTION”. Remember that most die in the hospital from pneumonia, the most severe respiratory infection.
Kennedy’s voice by the way is the result of something akin to or exactly like Spasmodic or Muscle Tension Dysphonia. It has nothing to do with brain function. He is as sharp as can be. He is to be applauded for accomplishing what he has and God willing will do in spite of this minor and sometimes slightly distracting handicap.
I regard him very highly.
This is not about politics. They are both Democrats. I am not in love with any party these days. The real issue here is your health and well being and informed consent.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS PAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. see and compare your understanding with my notes right below this video. mgw
These are my notes from watching the video. I’m sure you will have your own observations as well.
AD Refers to Alan Dershowitz and RK to Robert Kennedy junior . MGW is for Michael Grant White
AD often uses logic. Logic is a tool not, necessarily the truth. His” hypothetical “ is a tool too often used by others to put words in other’s mouths that they may not have a deep enough understanding of and get used against them later on. It borders on or demonstrates sophism (an argument apparently correct in form but actually invalid; especially : such an argument used to deceive).
The draft analogy will not withstand deep scrutiny. In this case the “enemy” attacking us is US in the form of prescription drug industry/WHO/ Faucci/CDC/politicians and paid media. “Fight wars where they die”. Feeds into our national anthem Star Spangled banner boom boom boom respect/consciousness tendency to create a” war on this” and a “ war on that” when no real war is being waged except by the prescription drug industry on humanity.
AD says logic strongly suggests this needs Democratic approval and court authority justification but MGW says they too often follow the money and do we really want our lives depending on 9 senior citizens on-high in robes that bob and sway over the decades. LOL
Kennedy relies mostly on facts and decades of experience.
Voluntary? Considering that flu shots can (RK “cause transfer of virus to others”) why would you ever volunteer to get vaccinated?
MGW The main issue is mandatory or informed consent or denial option.
MGW Why do we citizens have to pay for this research?
RK Proven unavoidably UNSAFE .
- Testing healthy people only but mostly sick people get the shots
MGW Bad science guides business and political agenda and they ALL follow the money
RK Faucci is connected with 500 million dollars spent on vaccines .
MGW Gates talks about “a lifetime of safety” OK so let’s inject a few volunteers and wait 80 years and see what occurs? LOL
RK Kids get 72 vaccinations these days. I got three.
RK 4 billion dollars paid out in vaccine damages but only 1% were brought to court.
MGW how many more billions would get paid out if the other 99% were brought to court.
MGW by the way WE TAXPAYERS pay those fines.
RK 1986 law protecting vaccines. No liability, no risk, no incentive to make safe, no safety tests. They don’t call it medicine and thus get around existing testing laws.
- Defended “accused” murderer OJ Simpson and now defends government funded prescription drug PROVEN murderers.
AD Prescription drug companies “care deeply for others” MGW. LMAO
MGW. RK’s jury is way more than 12. Facts speak louder than manipulating sophistic logic.
- “They said will stem the tide of the pandemic “ . These are their words, no proof-= HYPERPOBOLE.
Gates ”’ One shot equals a lifetime of immunity”. LMAO
Pause the video and read the charts when they are shown please.
RK and chart shown at 1:00:14 Cochrane summary. Vaccination saves on average around .04 working days.
RK Flu shot transmits the flu and equals 6 times more likely for you to give someone else the flu.
RK chart 1:01:14 More polio linked to oral vaccine.
RK Longevity reduced in elderly after 1990s when flu shots added.
MGW Masks proven not to work and cause re-breathing of toxins, GERMS and lowering oxygen. Lowered oxygen causes or worsens a host of maladies. https://breathing.com/blogs/news/masks MASKS
AD’s logic. “If it didn’t work why would so many doctors recommend them? MGW to AD why would so many doctors recommend prescription drugs Causing iatrogenic illness and death?
AD logic. Placebo testing?
MGW the horses are out of the corral. many fast-track drugs are eventually taken off the market due to adverse reactions found beyond day 1 of drug introduction to the public. An ounce of prevention here = a hundred pounds of cure.
RK Post distribution placebo testing is discouraged by HHS
AD” Emergency”. MGW NO AD, Plandemic.
RK CDC 4.9 billion dollars of budget comes from issuing and selling vaccines. NIH employees tied to vaccines earn up $150,000 yearly from sales on autism.
RK “The CDC is really an arm of industry and completely corrupt “’
RK Any immune responses not proven to be long lasting. MGW How can they ever be proven With Copious false positive and false negative testing results.
RK picture of Dr. William Thompson: “We have been ordered to fake all the science on autism for the past decade “
Hope this helps,
Mike July 25, 2020
DELL BIGTREE & MICHELLE MALKIN DISCUSSION ABOUT THE YOUTUBE CENSORING
SUBSCRIBE TO TECHNOCRACY NEWS
TRUMP SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER STRIPPING SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES OF “LIABILITY SHIELD” JULY 26, 2020 WHITE HOUSE PLANS EMPOWER FCC REGULATE AMERICAN SOCIAL MEDIA GIANTS
WIKIPEDIA IS NOW CENSORING DEL BIGTREE
NEW YORK CITY HOSPITAL WHISTLEBLOWER
WUHAN CHINESE MEDICAL DOCTOR WHISTLEBLOWER
STORY AT-A-GLANCE (MERCOLA.COM)
IT WAS YOUTUBE SO I COPIED IT TO SAVE IT FROM BEING TAKEN DOWN.
- According to a Hong Kong whistleblower scientist who has fled to the U.S., the Chinese government and World Health Organization representatives in Hong Kong covered up the Wuhan outbreak, allowing it to spread unchecked around the world
- Researchers have identified inserted sections in the spike surface that allow SARS-CoV-2 to bind to human cells. They also warn that current efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine are likely to fail simply because the etiology of the virus has been misunderstood
- Open source studies describe the creation of new chimeraviruses that have SARS-coronavirus as a base. For example, researchers have exchanged properties between bat coronaviruses and human SARS viruses. So, there can be no doubt that the technology and know-how exists
- A new hypothesis is that a virus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 infected miners in 2012, evolving into SARS-CoV-2 inside the miners, who remained ill for up to four months. And, that medical samples taken from the miners ended up escaping from the Wuhan Institute of Virology
- If SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated, manmade virus, it is proof positive that gain-of-function research poses tremendous risks to humanity and that those risks far exceed any potential gain
The debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 continues, as does the debate over whether the pandemic could have been quashed had Chinese authorities acted and shared information about the outbreak sooner.
According to a Hong Kong whistleblower scientist who has fled to the U.S., the Chinese government and World Health Organization representatives in Hong Kong covered up the Wuhan outbreak, allowing it to spread unchecked around the world.
In the featured Fox News interview, the whistleblower, Dr. Li-Meng Yan — who worked at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health, a top coronavirus research lab — claims her early investigation into the SARS-like outbreak in Wuhan could have helped prevent a global pandemic from developing, had her supervisors shared her findings.
Yan claims her supervisor, WHO consultant Leo Poon, asked her to, secretly, investigate reports of a SARS-like illness spreading in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019. The Chinese government had refused overseas experts from getting involved, and Poon wanted her to figure out what was really going on.
Human-to-Human Spread Was Recognized From the Start
Yan, who has many professional colleagues in China, turned to a friend who works in the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and had first-hand information about the outbreak. Yan was told there was likely human-to-human transmission occurring, as they had found family clusters of cases.
The WHO, meanwhile, did not confirm the human-to-human spread potential for several weeks. On the contrary, an official WHO statement said the virus “does not transmit readily between people.” In a Tweet, WHO also stated that preliminary investigations by Chinese authorities “found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”
January 16, 2020, Yan was again asked to reach out to her contacts in China to see if she could learn more. Her CDC contacts were fearful, but it became clear that patients and front-line doctors were not being properly protected, and that Chinese authorities were trying to keep a lid on the flow of information.
When she updated Poon, he told her to stay silent and not cross the Chinese government, or else they’d both be “disappeared.” Yan felt it was crucial to inform the public, but Poon took no action. The co-director of the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health laboratory, professor Malik Peiris, also stayed quiet.
Yan believes WHO colluded with the China Communist Party (CCP) government to prevent information about the virus from coming out. The WHO quite predictably denies her claims.
Yan describes how, since her escape, the CCP has been trying to smear her name and ruin her professional reputation, saying she’s been kidnapped by Americans, and even that she has a mental disorder. Her professional webpages and affiliations have been deleted and removed.
Yan Doesn’t Provide Any Shocking Revelations
On the whole, though, Yan doesn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know. It’s been clear that China delayed telling the public about the Wuhan outbreak. She doesn’t indicate having any information about the virus’ origin, and she certainly does not provide any useful recommendations for how to protect ourselves.
In fact, she parrots the recommendations of most governments — staying 6 feet apart, using alcohol-based disinfectants and wearing surgical masks. Aside from disinfectants, which may be useful for killing viruses on hands and surfaces, social distancing and mask wearing have no basis in actual science.
You can learn more about these two interventions in “Why Social Distancing Should Not Be the New Normal” and “Conclusive Proof — Masks Do Not Inhibit Viral Spread.”
Of course, the Chinese have been known to wear face masks in public for some time, but they’ve primarily been worn to protect the wearer against air pollution1,2 — not infectious disease. Just because masks prevent inhalation of dangerous air pollution does not mean they work against viruses.
Based on current data, Yan also seems to exaggerate the dangers of the virus, seeing how the COVID-19 mortality rate is now down to a fraction of a percent and a vast majority — about 90% — of those infected remain completely asymptomatic.
All of that said, she’s certainly correct when saying that the CCP’s attempts to keep details of the Wuhan outbreak from the public allowed the virus to spread, not only through China but also across the world.
SARS-CoV-2 Did Not Evolve Naturally, Scientists Say
With regard to the origin of SARS-CoV-2, scientists keep finding more clues indicating it’s not a naturally-evolved virus. Among them are two recent papers by Norwegian and British researchers Sørensen, Susrud and Dalgleish.
In the first paper,3 “A Candidate Vaccine for Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) Developed from Analysis of its General Method of Action for Infectivity,” published in the journal Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, they claim to have identified inserted sections in the spike surface that allows it to bind to and enter human cells.
According to the authors, “The SARS-CoV-2 spike is significantly different from any other SARS that we have studied.”
The second paper,4 “The Evidence Which Suggests That This Is No Naturally Evolved Virus: A Reconstructed Historical Aetiology of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike,” published by the Norwegian periodical Minerva,5,6 July 13, 2020, presents several arguments for why SARS-CoV-2 is likely to have been manipulated in the lab.
As in the first paper, the researchers stress anomalies in the spike protein of the virus. The abstract reads, in part:7
“… SARS-CoV-2 is possessed of dual action capability … The likelihood of this being the result of natural processes is very small. The spike has six inserts which are unique fingerprints with five salient features indicative of purposive manipulation.
We then add to the bio-chemistry a diachronic dimension by analysing a sequence of four linked published research projects which, we suggest, show by deduction how, where, when and by whom the SARS-CoV-2 Spike acquired its special characteristics. This reconstructed historical aetiology meets the criteria of means, timing, agent and place to produce sufficient confidence to reverse the burden of proof.
Henceforth, those who would maintain that the COVID-19 pandemic arose from zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious account is wrong before asserting that their evidence is persuasive, most especially when, as we also show, there are puzzling errors in their use of evidence.”
US-China Collaborated on Coronavirus Research
Sørensen also highlights open source studies describing the creation of new chimeraviruses that have SARS-coronavirus as a base. For example, researchers have exchanged properties between bat coronaviruses and human SARS viruses. So, there can be no doubt that the technology and know-how exists. Minerva reporter Aksel Fridstrom writes:8
“Furthermore, Sørensen’s article points to the fact that Wuhan’s Virology Institute again in 2010 took part in gain-of-function experiments with international collaborators, where SARS-coronavirus was provided with additional properties that increase the virus’s ability to infect humans.”
In that research, an HIV pseudovirus was used to express seven bat ACE2 receptors. The binding properties of these bat ACE2 receptors were compared to human ACE2 receptors in order to determine which one would have the greatest ability to bind to and infect human cells.
The international collaborators in this case included researchers at the University of North Carolina. Five years later, in 2015, the University of North Carolina again collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, performing gain-of-function research in which bat viruses were manipulated to create a chimeric virus capable of binding to human upper airway cells. That particular virus was called SHC014-MA15.
“Sørensen and his co-authors write that this work created ‘a chimeric virus with very high infectivity potential targeted to the human upper respiratory tract’ and that what is being described is ‘in fact, precisely SARS-CoV-2 properties,’” Fridstrom writes.9
Virus Origin Papers Are Being Shunned by Scientific Journals
One of the reasons Sørensen, Susrud and Dalgleish chose to publish their science paper in a magazine rather than a scientific journal is because of the difficulty getting papers about the virus’ origin published. There’s tremendous stigma attached to this topic.
The journal Nature was recently caught blocking accounts of people questioning the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 on Twitter, and several papers discussing the lab origin theory or proposing genetic engineering are languishing on preprint servers, seemingly unable to get accepted for formal publication. Several such papers are mentioned in a July 16, 2020, GM Watch article.10
Sørensen, Susrud and Dalgleish had also already gotten the runaround on their first paper. Both the Journal of Virology and Nature rejected it, stating it was “unsuitable for publication.” It was eventually accepted by Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, a journal chaired by Stanford University and University of Dundee scientists.
Why COVID-19 Vaccines Are Likely to Fail
Importantly, in “A Candidate Vaccine for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) Developed from Analysis of its General Method of Action for Infectivity,”11 Sorensen et.al. warn that current efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine are likely to fail since the etiology of the virus has been misunderstood:12
“These data reveal the biological structure of SARS-CoV-2 Spike and confirm that accumulated charge from inserts and salt bridges are in surface positions capable of binding with cell membrane components other than the ACE2 receptor.
We have also looked at the naked coronavirus spike protein as a concept for the basis of a vaccine, which we have rejected because of high risk of contamination with human-like epitopes.
Analysis of the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 shows 78.4% similarity with human-like (HL) epitopes. For the avoidance of confusion, a standard protein blast searches for functionalities and homologies to other proteins.
However, antibodies can only recognize 5-6 amino acids and therefore a 6 amino acid rolling window search for antibody epitopes was performed.
A search so tailored to match against all human known proteins will give a 78.4% human similarity to the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, i.e if all epitopes on the 1255 amino acid long SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein can be used by antibodies then there will be 983 antibody binding sites which also could bind to epitopes on human proteins.
This is what we did and found … [I]n the present context, any vaccine design based on the whole Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 may not be immunogenic due its high human similarity compared to a vaccine with specifically selected NHL epitopes, such as Biovacc-19 does — and is.
COVID-19 candidate vaccines designed without appreciating these problems may run similar risks to those experienced with HIV vaccines that failed to show protection.
The possibility of inducing autoimmune responses or antibody-dependent enhancements, needs to be carefully guarded against because there is published evidence that an HIV candidate vaccine has actually enhanced infectivity:
‘Vaccinations were halted; participants were unblinded. In post hoc analyses, more HIV infections occurred in vaccinees vs placebo recipients in men who had Ad5-neutralizing antibodies and/or were uncircumcised. Follow-up was extended to assess relative risk of HIV acquisition in vaccinees vs placebo recipients over time.’
Such antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) has been observed for coronaviruses in animal models, allowing them to enter cells expressing Fc𝛾R. ADE is not fully understood: however, it is suggested that antibody-dependent enhancements may come as a result of amino acid variability and antigenic drift.”
They also point out that choosing an adjuvant after the primary vaccine design work has been completed, which is how vaccine development is typically done, may be yet another serious mistake that could make a COVID-19 vaccine really dangerous.
Many Different Lab Origin Hypotheses Have Been Presented
Another scientist who questions the natural evolution theory is Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., a molecular biologist and virologist. In a June 2, 2020, Independent Science News article,13 Latham and Allison Wilson, Ph.D., a geneticist, dissect the zoonotic origin theory, showing the research simply does not support this claim.
While they do not dispute the idea that SARS-CoV-2 started out as a bat coronavirus at some point, they dispute the mechanism by which it supposedly gained the ability to infect humans. In his article, Latham lays out several different lab origin hypotheses, which are also reviewed in my interview with him, featured in “Cover-Up of SARS-CoV-2 Origin?”
Is SARS-CoV-2 Really a Novel Virus?
Latham and Wilson continue their search for the truth in a July 15, 2020, Independent Science News article.14
“… enormous scientific attention has been paid to the molecular character of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including its novel genome sequence in comparison with its near relatives,” Latham writes.
“In stark contrast, virtually no attention has been paid to the physical provenance of those nearest genetic relatives, its presumptive ancestors, which are two viral sequences named BtCoV/4991 and RaTG13.”
According to Latham, SARS-CoV-2 may not be an entirely novel virus after all. A highly conserved close ancestor, BtCoV/4991, has been listed in the database for seven years and has been featured in the published literature. When the Wuhan lab later resequenced this sample, they simply renamed it, thereby obscuring its history.
As Latham explains in his article15 — which I encourage you to read in its entirety — BtCoV/4991 was found in samples collected in a mineshaft in Yunnan province, China in 2012-2013.
The samples were collected after six miners contracted a strange respiratory illness that sound remarkably similar if not identical to COVID-19. Three of them died. While the disease had only been described in a Chinese thesis written by the doctor who treated the miners, Latham had the thesis translated into English.
“The evidence it contains has led us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Latham writes.16 “It has also led us to theorize a plausible route by which an apparently isolated disease outbreak in a mine in 2012 led to a global pandemic in 2019.
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 that we propose below is based on the case histories of these miners and their hospital treatment. This simple theory accounts for all the key features of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus …”
We suggest, first, that inside the miners RaTG13 (or a very similar virus) evolved into SARS-CoV-2, an unusually pathogenic coronavirus highly adapted to humans. Second, that the Shi lab used medical samples taken from the miners and sent to them by Kunming University Hospital for their research. It was this human-adapted virus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, that escaped from the WIV in 2019.
Key features Latham and Wilson believe can be explained by their theory include:
- The origin of the novel furin cleavage site on the virus’ spike protein that enhances its spread in the human body
- The “exceptional affinity of the virus spike protein for human receptors”
- The virus’ lack of evolution since the pandemic began
- The reason SARS-CoV-2 targets the lungs
While they do not claim SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered, they believe gain-of-function research performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology played “an essential causative role in the pandemic.”
THE TRUTH ABOUT MAINSTREAM MEDIA & CENSORSHIP
The Mojiang Miners Passage Hypothesis
Latham and Wilson go on to explain their hypothesis, which they’ve dubbed the Mojiang miners passage (MMP) hypothesis. Again, I recommend reading the original article, but for your edification, I’ve chosen to quote a larger-than-usual section to summarize it for you:
“We suggest, first, that inside the miners RaTG13 (or a very similar virus) evolved into SARS-CoV-2, an unusually pathogenic coronavirus highly adapted to humans. Second, that the Shi lab used medical samples taken from the miners and sent to them by Kunming University Hospital for their research. It was this human-adapted virus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, that escaped from the WIV in 2019 …
Passaging is a standard virological technique for adapting viruses to new species, tissues, or cell types. It is normally done by deliberately infecting a new host species or a new host cell type with a high dose of virus. This initial viral infection would ordinarily die out because the host’s immune system vanquishes the ill-adapted virus.
But, in passaging, before it does die out a sample is extracted and transferred to a new identical tissue, where viral infection restarts. Done iteratively, this technique … intensively selects for viruses adapted to the new host or cell type …
We agree that ordinary rates of evolution would not allow RaTG13 to evolve into SARS-CoV-2 but we also believe that conditions inside the lungs of the miners were far from ordinary. Five major factors specific to the hospitalized miners favored a very high rate of evolution inside them.
The lungs of the miners, we suggest, supported a very high viral load leading to proportionately rapid viral evolution. Furthermore, according to the Master’s thesis, the immune systems of the miners were compromised and remained so even for those discharged. This weakness on the part of the miners may also have encouraged evolution of the virus …
In support of the MMP theory we also know something about the samples taken from the miners. According to the Master’s thesis, samples were taken from patients for ‘scientific research’ and blood samples (at least) were sent to the WIV …
The logical course of such research would be to sequence viral RNA extracted directly from unfrozen tissue or blood samples and/or to generate live infectious clones for which it would be useful (if not imperative) to amplify the virus by placing it in human cell culture. Either technique could have led to accidental infection of a lab researcher …
We propose that, when frozen samples derived from the miners were eventually opened in the Wuhan lab they were already highly adapted to humans to an extent possibly not anticipated by the researchers. One small mistake or mechanical breakdown could have led directly to the first human infection in late 2019.
Thus, one of the miners, most likely patient 3, or patient 4 (whose thymus was removed), was effectively patient zero of the COVID-19 epidemic. In this scenario, COVID-19 is not an engineered virus; but, equally, if it had not been taken to Wuhan and no further molecular research had been performed or planned for it then the virus would have died out from natural causes, rather than escaped to initiate the COVID-19 pandemic.”
As discussed in “Bioweapon Labs Must Be Shut Down and Scientists Prosecuted,” the COVID-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call for the world to reconsider the wisdom of gain-of-function research. Lab escapes are guaranteed to occur, sooner or later. We got lucky this time, in the sense that SARS-CoV-2 is far less deadly than initially feared. But the government response to the pandemic has been devastating.
Global shut-downs have taken a massive toll on mental and financial health, not to mention the global economy as a whole. Could we survive as a species if something with a really high lethality were to get out? These are crucial questions that deserve public discussion and close scrutiny by lawmakers.
HERE IS THE VIDEO
INGRAHAM: WITHOUT A TRACE
TUCKER – BIG TECH CENSORS
CENSORSHIP- COVID-19 BOLLINGER
ZACH VORHIES FACEBOOK WHISTLEBLOWER #1
ZACH #2
ZACH #3
HOW GOOGLE IS MANIPULATING SEARCHING SAYER JI
madisonarealymesupportgroup.com
MEET THE CENSORED: ANDRE DAMON
INCREASED CONTENT MODERATION HAS BEEN SOLD AS A TOOL TO CONTROL THE FAR RIGHT, BUT THE WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO SOUND THE ALARM.
” TK: What do you say to people whose response to this issue is that private companies have the right to do what they want on their own platforms?
Well, legally speaking, private companies do not have the right to do what they want. A restaurant owner can’t throw a patron out of his restaurant because of the color of his skin. UPS can’t say they won’t deliver your packages because they don’t agree with your political views. Technology companies provide a vital social service, just like private municipal waste collection companies and private package handling companies. They do not have the right to discriminate against people based on their political views.”
Matt TaibbiNov 25
On November 15th, weeks after news that a New York Post article about Hunter Biden had been blocked by prominent social media platforms, Pink Floyd lead singer Roger Waters ripped Twitter for a less-publicized incident:
Roger Waters @rogerwaters
Twitter has banned the International Youth and Students for Social Equality [IYSSE]. wsws.org/en/articles/20…It is critical that people are informed of this effort to censor them. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID of @jack?
November 15th 2020
1,050 Retweets3,350 Likes
The IYSSE, a student movement affiliated with international Socialist parties, was suspended over an obscure technical violation (see explanation below). It was reinstated after nine days, which in a period of increasingly draconian tech penalties might have been a small surprise.
Less surprising was that yet another organization associated with the World Socialist Web Site had been hit with a punitive content moderation decision. For much of the last four years, the WSWS has been a bit of a canary in the coal mine, when it comes to new forms of censorship and speech restrictions.
Many Americans didn’t pay attention to new forms of content moderation until May, 2019, when a group of prominent tech platforms banned figures like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopolis. A legend quickly spread that such campaigns exclusively target the right. Long before then, however, the WSWS had been trying to sound the alarm about the impact of corporate speech moderation on dissenting voices on the progressive left. As far back as August of 2017, the WSWS sent an open letter to Google, demanding that it stop the “political blacklisting” of their site, as well as others.
Like many alternative news sites, WSWS noticed a steep decline in traffic in 2016-2017, after Donald Trump was elected and we began to hear calls for more regulation of “fake news.” Determined to search out the reason, the site conducted a series of analyses that proved crucial in helping convince outlets like the New York Times to cover the issue. In its open letter to Google, the WSWS described inexplicable changes to search results in their political bailiwick:
Google searches for “Leon Trotsky” yielded 5,893 impressions (appearances of the WSWS in search results) in May of this year. In July, the same search yielded exactly zero impressions for the WSWS, which is the Internet publication of the international movement founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.
The WSWS connected the change to Project Owl, a plan announced by Google in April of 2017 designed to “surface more authoritative content.” When I called Google about a year later for a story on a related subject, they explained the concept of “authority” as an exercise in weighting some credentials over others. So, I was told, an old search for “baseball” might first return a page for your local little league, while a new one would send you to the site for Major League Baseball.
The rub was that Google was now pushing viewers away from alternative sources, such that an article in the New York Times about Trotskyism might be ranked ahead of the world’s leading Trotskyite media organ. Queries had to be right on the nose to call up a whole host of alternative sites, all of which had seen sharp drops in their Google search results.
The WSWS listed many of them: Alternet down 63 percent, Common Dreams down 37 percent, Democracy Now! down 36 percent, TruthOut, down 25 percent, etc. Even Wikileaks, in the middle of an international furor over Russiagate, was down 30 percent.
In the years since, the WSWS has been one of the only major media outlets in the U.S. to regularly focus on tech censorship issues, frequently showing an interest in constitutional principles curiously absent in traditionally “liberal” publications. This has won the site an unpleasant brand of notoriety with tech platforms. In a recent Senate hearing, Google CEO Sundar Pichai referenced the WSWS when challenged by Utah Republican Mike Lee to name one left-wing “high profile person or entity” it had censored.
TK reached out to Andre Damon, writer and editor for the WSWS, to ask about the site’s experiences:
TK: There was recently an incident involving the Twitter presence of International Youth and Students for Social Equality. Can you explain what happened? Has the WSWS had any other issues with Twitter over the years?
Damon: On November 11, Twitter suspended the account of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (US) without explanation. The IYSSE is the student movement of the Socialist Equality Parties around the world, which are affiliated with the World Socialist Web Site.
When we wrote to Twitter to demand the reinstatement of the account, Twitter replied vaguely, hinting that the IYSSE was operating multiple accounts. We responded that the IYSSE has chapters all over the world, which are officially recognized on dozens of campuses, including New York University, the University of Michigan, and Berlin’s Humboldt University, where the IYSSE holds multiple seats in the student parliament. Each of these chapters, legitimately, has its own social media presence.
Twitter’s stated justification for suspending the IYSSE’s account was a ridiculous pretext, and this act of censorship triggered statements of opposition. Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters and model Andrea Pejić made statements opposing it, as did dozens of other people. Nine days after the account was suspended, Twitter reinstated it, again without any serious explanation.
TK: When did the WSWS first become interested in the issue of platform censorship, content moderation, or whatever you want to call it? Actually, what do you call it? Is what’s going on with increased content moderation a first amendment/free speech issue?
Damon: It’s censorship, and it absolutely is a First Amendment issue.
In July 2017, we noticed that traffic to our site from Google fell by more than 75 percent. After reaching out to other sites and SEO experts we realized that the WSWS was one of over a dozen left-wing websites whose search traffic had also plunged.
As we sought an explanation, we discovered a blog post by Ben Gomes, at the time Google’s VP of engineering, announcing that Google was making changes in its algorithm to demote what it called “fake news.” It explained that Google would be hiring a small army of people to review search results and score them. The reviewers were told that if a search returned “alternative viewpoints,” that search should be scored poorly. This system was internally called ‘Project Owl,’ and later came to be known as such publicly.
It was obvious that the drop in search traffic to the WSWS and other left-wing sites was caused by this change in Google’s algorithm.
The actions by Google were the outcome of a campaign, largely bipartisan but led by the Democrats and their affiliated news outlets, to claim that domestic social opposition was the product of interference by foreign countries, particularly Russia. To stop this alleged interference, it was necessary to censor domestic political opposition, which the Russians allegedly sought to “amplify.”
At repeated hearings in Washington, figures like Mark Warner and Adam Schiff would demand over and over again that Google, Facebook, and Twitter censor left-wing content. It was all a clear and flagrant violation of the First Amendment, which says that Congress does not have the power to limit the freedom of expression. But here was Congress instigating private companies to do exactly that, and threatening to regulate or fine them if they did not comply.
In August 2017, the WSWS sent Google executives an open letter demanding “that the anti-democratic changes to the Google search result rankings and its search algorithm since April be reversed.” In January 2018, we called for the formation of an “international coalition to fight Internet censorship.”
In response to our letters, Google flatly denied it was carrying out political censorship. But this makes its admission this month that it is censoring the WSWS so significant.
When Senator Mike Lee asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai, “Can you name for me one high profile person or entity from a liberal ideology who you have censored,” Pichai replied that “We have had compliance issues with the World Socialist Review [sic], which is a left-leaning publication.”
This was a confirmation of every claim made by the WSWS in its campaign against internet censorship.
TK: What other private platforms have tried to regulate your content?
Damon: The World Socialist website is banned, without any justification, from R/Politics on Reddit, as well as R/Coronavirus. The latter is particularly egregious since we have been the most consistent proponent of the position of the WHO — that COVID-19 can be contained — of any news outlet. The New York Times has published over a dozen articles by Thomas Friedman arguing for herd immunity — that is, for letting COVID-19 spread throughout the population — based on irresponsible quack pseudo-science.
Facebook has repeatedly prevented us from holding events. In the latest incident, it prevented the IYSSE from holding an event entitled “Trump’s Electoral Coup and the Threat of Dictatorship.” But when we changed the name of the event to a generic placeholder, we were allowed to set it up.
TK: Why did the WSWS decide to focus on the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, and what was the response of the platforms to this work?
Damon: The WSWS took a stand against the 1619 Project for two main reasons: Because it was a work of historical falsification, which denigrated the two great democratic revolutions — the struggle for independence between 1775 and 1783 and the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 — which rank among the most progressive events in world history; and because its political purpose was to promote the politics of racial communalism.
The 1619 Project falsely claimed that the revolution that established the United States aimed at preserving and extending slavery. This is a blatant falsification of the historical record.
Moreover, the 1619 Project’s political purpose, in falsely claiming that blacks in America “fought alone” for their liberation, was to weaken the bonds of class solidarity between black and white workers. It is a fundamental and undeniable fact that hundreds of thousands of Northern whites, many of them artisans, farmers and craftsmen, sacrificed their lives in the Civil War under the banner of the battle hymn of the republic: “let us die to make men free.”
This fact shows that it is possible to create a multi-racial, multi-religious, and multinational movement of the working class. The slogan of Marxists, going back to the Communist Manifesto, is “workers of the world, unite!” not, “races of the world, divide.”
Working in collaboration with the world’s leading historians of the American revolution and Civil War, the WSWS exposed the central premise of the 1619 Project to be utterly false.
In November and October of last year, the World Socialist Web Site published interviews with Gordon Wood, James McPherson, James Oakes, Victoria Bynum, and Clayborne Carson. These historians demolished the series’ central premise that the American Revolution was an insurrection to defend slavery. Moreover, they made clear that neither they nor any of their leading colleagues were ever consulted in the production of the 1619 Project.
Our coverage of the 1619 Project exposes the true role of internet censorship. Google claims that its censorship regime is aimed at promoting “authoritative” and “original” content, while demoting what it calls “alternative” viewpoints.
There exist no more “authoritative” documents on the 1619 Project than the interviews published by the WSWS with these historians. Wood and McPherson are universally regarded as the best authorities on American history, and their interviews on the WSWS are what led to thousands of other articles being written on the 1619 Project — for and against.
By contrast, the 1619 Project was based on a rejection of these “authoritative” sources, who were never consulted in its writing or publication.
So the obvious question is, why do you have to scroll to the third page of Google results for a search for “1619 Project” to see a single article from the WSWS on the 1619 Project? Why don’t the interviews with Wood and McPherson show up?
The answer is that Google’s censorship has nothing to do with helping users find “authoritative” content. Its sole aim is to demote content to which the US political establishment objects, and promote content that it wants to promote.
TK: A lot of the more high-profile targets of deletions and suspensions have been conservatives like Alex Jones, or the followers of the Q movement. You’ve said that you believe the real goal of content moderation is to suppress left critiques of capitalism. Is it possible going after high profile conservatives is a way of selling the concept to liberals? Or is there another motive that you see?
Damon: The World Socialist Web Site does not believe that censoring fascists is an effective way to fight fascism. It lends credence to their false claims to oppose the political establishment. The fascists receive high-level support from the financial oligarchy, from within the state, the police, and the military. Censorship only strengthens them.
At Berlin’s Humboldt University, the IYSSE has been leading a campaign by students to oppose the far-right professors that play a leading role at the university, such as Jörg Baberowski, who told Der Spiegel that “Hitler was not vicious.” The right-wing press in Germany has attacked us for trying to “censor” Baberowski and others. No, we have been waging this fight by telling students and the broader population what these figures actually do, say, and advocate! We fight fascism by telling the truth about the fascists and exposing their high-level connections to the state.
The real target of censorship is always the left.
TK: Do you see a connection in all of this to the long tradition of suppression of leftist speech in America (dating back to the “red flag” laws, the “criminal syndicalism” standard, etc.), or is this something different, inspired by different motives?
Damon: There is a long tradition of anticommunism in America. Most of the arguments for internet censorship are lifted straight from the arguments of the McCarthyites and Birchites, as well as the Southern segregationists, who claimed that blacks in America would be happy with Jim Crow if only “outside agitators” would stop stirring up trouble.
TK: What do you say to people whose response to this issue is that private companies have the right to do what they want on their own platforms?
Well, legally speaking, private companies do not have the right to do what they want. A restaurant owner can’t throw a patron out of his restaurant because of the color of his skin. UPS can’t say they won’t deliver your packages because they don’t agree with your political views. Technology companies provide a vital social service, just like private municipal waste collection companies and private package handling companies. They do not have the right to discriminate against people based on their political views.
TK: Have you observed changes in American attitudes toward speech recently? How about changes within the political left on this issue?
Damon: In my experience, the American working class is fiercely committed to the principles of freedom of expression.
With the affluent upper-middle class, it is a different story. For years, the parties and organizations of what we call the pseudo-left have been promoting sexual witch-hunts against cultural and intellectual figures, equating an accusation with a conviction, and calling for the destruction of their careers. You can see the right-wing character of such campaigns in the witch-hunt of Roman Polanski, whose brilliant film on the Dreyfus Affair has been condemned equally by bourgeois feminists and by anti-Semites.
Your readers who are unfamiliar with the record of the WSWS will be relieved to learn that we opposed the #metoo campaign from the start, and have defended figures such as Polanski, Louis CK and Kevin Spacey.
TK: Does the “content moderation” era already have a political legacy?
Damon: The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the suppression of information is a matter of life and death. Bob Woodward’s interview with Donald Trump, in which the president said he sought to “play down” the threat of the virus, even as his cabinet and members of congress were getting dire briefings about the looming disaster points to a far-reaching conspiracy to suppress information about the pandemic.
Every workplace is a microcosm of this nationwide conspiracy. In the auto plants, workers are not being told when their coworkers fall ill, making contact tracing impossible.
We have tried to make the WSWS the antipode to this conspiracy of silence. The WSWS is a hub for workers to learn about the threat posed by the disease, to track outbreaks at their factories and coordinate their response. There exists no comparable resource for manufacturing workers, particularly in the American Midwest.
The decision of what is true and false, what can and cannot be said, is not for self-interested corporations to decide. Working people need to know the truth. And the only way to get there is for them to be able to read whatever they please and to make up their own minds.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2023 75 YEAR UPDATE
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- The United States has been unique in its dedication to free speech, but that Constitutional right has been slowly eroded in the name of national security and protecting public health
- In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed to have proof of a communist spy ring within the U.S. State Department. The lesson from that time was the destructive power of accusation
- In 2017, an organization called Hamilton 68 claimed to have proof showing hundreds of Russian-affiliated Twitter accounts manipulated the U.S. election to get Trump into the White House. It turned out to be a complete hoax, but media never updated the public with that truth
- In 1948, the same year the CIA launched Project Mockingbird, the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act (aka the Smith-Mundt Act) became law, which forbade the U.S. government from pushing propaganda onto the U.S. population. President Barrack Obama repealed this law in 2013, thereby legalizing the propagandizing of Americans
- For propaganda to be truly successful, especially in the long term, you also need censorship, and in the U.S., this requires the undermining of free speech rights. The undermining of free speech took off at the end of 2016, when Obama signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which opened the door to an offensive information war against the public
In a March 28, 2023, article titled “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century,”1,2 Jacob Siegel, senior editor of Tablet magazine’s afternoon news digest, News and The Scroll, discusses the emergence of the “disinformation industrial complex,” which is the topic of his forthcoming book.
The United States has been unique in its dedication to free speech, but that Constitutional right is rapidly eroding in the name of national security and protecting public health.
Siegel traces the early days of the information war to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who in 1950 claimed to have proof of a communist spy ring within the U.S. State Department. Initially, he claimed to have the names of 205 communist spies. A day later, he revised it to 57. However, the inconsistency is not the point.
“The point was the power of the accusation,” Siegel says. “For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals: a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts, and demagogues.”
Blacklists and Witch Hunts Return
By 2017, American liberals had seemingly forgotten that lesson, as mainstream media pundits accused Donald Trump of being a Manchurian candidate installed by Russia. An organization called Hamilton 68 claimed to have proof showing hundreds of Russian-affiliated Twitter accounts manipulated the U.S. election to get Trump into the White House.
As it turns out, none of these accusations were true and Hamilton 68 turned out to be a “high-level hoax.” Most of the accounts were Americans engaged in organic conversations, which Hamilton 68 arbitrarily described as “Russian scheming.” Twitter’s safety officer, Yoel Roth, even admitted the company had labeled “real people” — again, mostly Americans — as “Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.”
A key difference between the McCarthy and Hamilton 68 episodes was that journalists, U.S. intelligence agencies and Congressional members didn’t swallow McCarthy’s accusations without chewing. When the witch hunt against Trump took off, anyone who questioned the accusations was attacked as a co-conspirator.
Media even refused to report on the evidence proving that Hamilton 68 was a complete scam. The level of disinterest in the truth suggested that American liberalism “had lost faith in the promise of freedom and embraced a new ideal,” Siegel writes.
Propaganda and Censorship — Two Sides of the Same Coin
Propaganda is as old as humanity itself, but the modern version of it can be traced back to 1948, when the CIA’s Office of Special Projects launched Operation Mockingbird, a clandestine CIA media infiltration campaign that involved bribing hundreds of journalists to publish fake stories at the CIA’s request.
The dismissal of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists as mentally unstable crackpots was one of the tactics invented by the CIA at this time. Its intent was (and still is) to marginalize and demoralize anyone who questions the fabricated narrative.
It’s quite telling that Operation Mockingbird was launched the same year the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act (aka the Smith-Mundt Act) became law, which forbade the U.S. government from pushing propaganda onto the U.S. population.
This anti-propaganda law was repealed in 2013 by then-President Barrack Obama. So, since July 2013, the U.S. government and CIA have been legally permitted to propagandize U.S. citizens. In addition to the simplification of global coordination of news by way of news agencies, this is yet another reason why propaganda has flourished and grown exponentially in recent years.
The undermining of free speech took off at the end of 2016, when Obama signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which opened the door to an offensive information war against the public.
But for propaganda to be truly successful, especially in the long term, you also need censorship — a concept wildly opposed in the U.S. until recently — and censorship, at least in America, requires the undermining of free speech rights.
As noted by Siegel, the effort to undercut free speech really took off at the end of 2016, when Obama signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which opened the door to “an open-ended, offensive information war” against the general public.
Seemingly overnight, “misinformation” and “disinformation” were said to pose an urgent existential threat to national security, freedom, democracy and, later, to public health. We’re now told we must eliminate misinformation to preserve free speech, which is so twisted that no Constitutionally-literate person can make sense of it.
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The Acceleration of Free Speech Elimination
By repealing the Smith-Mundt Act, and signing into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, Obama laid the legal groundwork for government control of speech in the U.S. Since then, a sprawling disinformation industrial complex has emerged, which seeks to control the internet and all information in it.
As described by Siegel, the U.S. national security infrastructure has now fused with social media platforms, which is where the information war is being fought. The national mobilization against disinformation has also been expanded from a whole-of-government approach to a whole-of-society approach.
In a 2018 document, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) calls for “leveraging expertise from across government, tech and marketing sectors, academia, and NGO’s.” “This is how the government-created ‘war against disinformation’ became the great moral crusade of its time,” Siegel writes.
Of course, media have also played a significant role in the “whole-of-society response” to disinformation, but they are “by far the weakest player in the counter-disinformation complex,” Seigel notes, adding:3
“The American press, once the guardian of democracy, was hollowed out to the point that it could be worn like a hand puppet by the U.S. security agencies and party operatives.
It would be nice to call what has taken place a tragedy, but an audience is meant to learn something from a tragedy. As a nation, America not only has learned nothing, it has been deliberately prevented from learning anything while being made to chase after shadows.
This is not because Americans are stupid; it’s because what has taken place is not a tragedy but something closer to a crime. Disinformation is both the name of the crime and the means of covering it up; a weapon that doubles as a disguise.
The crime is the information war itself, which was launched under false pretenses and by its nature destroys the essential boundaries between the public and private and between the foreign and domestic, on which peace and democracy depend.
By conflating the anti-establishment politics of domestic populists with acts of war by foreign enemies, it justified turning weapons of war against American citizens. It turned the public arenas where social and political life take place into surveillance traps and targets for mass psychological operations.
The crime is the routine violation of Americans’ rights by unelected officials who secretly control what individuals can think and say. What we are seeing now, in the revelations exposing the inner workings of the state-corporate censorship regime, is only the end of the beginning.
The United States is still in the earliest stages of a mass mobilization that aims to harness every sector of society under a singular technocratic rule.
The mobilization, which began as a response to the supposedly urgent menace of Russian [election] interference, now evolves into a regime of total information control that has arrogated to itself the mission of eradicating abstract dangers such as error, injustice, and harm — a goal worthy only of leaders who believe themselves to be infallible, or comic-book supervillains.”
Phase 2 of the Information War — Total Control
The COVID pandemic was a significant part of Phase 1 in the information war, although the war on public perception began years earlier. As noted by Siegel, the COVID phase was “marked by distinctively human displays of incompetence and brute-force intimidation.” Phase 2 will undoubtedly be carried out by artificial intelligence, now thoroughly trained to identify the greatest triggers of fear and panic, both on an individual and societal basis.
We can also expect censorship by algorithm. It will no longer be a game of whack-a-mole with humans tagging posts and requesting their removal. Instead, messages containing certain words simply won’t go anywhere and won’t be seen. Spoken and written key words will be automatically flagged and deleted or barred from posting by AI.
AI-based bots and “sock puppets” (fake accounts) can also be launched across platforms and be algorithmically amplified to alter the perceptions of billions in real time. We saw this trend emerging during the first round of COVID, where multiple accounts were posting the same “original” message, verbatim, at the same time.
As noted by Siegel, the end goal of all this information wrangling is control. Not partial control, but total. Over everything and everyone. This is also why we will never see a government authority admit they spread disinformation themselves, even though, technically, they’ve been guilty of such on numerous occasions over the last three years.
They dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, even though U.S. intelligence had proof that it, and its contents, were real. They claimed the lab leak theory was a racist conspiracy, even though, privately, the scientific consensus was that the virus came from a lab. They told us the COVID jabs would stop transmission, even though that was never tested in the first place. The list goes on.
“Disinformation, now and for all time, is whatever they say it is,” Siegel writes.4 “That is not a sign that the concept is being misused or corrupted; it is the precise functioning of a totalitarian system.”
Partners in Crime
Siegel isn’t the only one calling out the information war as a crime. In another Tablet article titled “Partners in Crime,”5 New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney Jenin Younes reviews evidence from the Missouri legal case6 against the Biden administration showing how government and Big Tech built “a whole-of-system censorship campaign” in clear violation of the First Amendment.
Internal Meta documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government in July 2023 has also fleshed out the story of how state-sponsored censorship came to be the official policy of so many private companies.
The evidence shows that Facebook and other social media companies did not take it upon themselves to become arbiters of truth. Rather, they were aggressively pressured to do so by Biden administration officials, and officials within various federal agencies. Sometimes they did meekly follow the direction given, but even in cases where they tried to push back, they eventually had to fall in line for fear of government retaliation.
“While other lawsuits alleging First Amendment violations based on government involvement in social media censorship have been filed over the past two years, Missouri [v. Biden] has proven uniquely successful,” Younes writes.7
“When the complaint was filed in May of 2022, the main proof the Missouri plaintiffs had were public statements from high-ranking members of the administration, including former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and President Biden himself.
The plaintiffs cited public statements of government officials unabashedly proclaiming they were flagging posts for social media companies to censor; openly criticizing the companies for inadequate removal of content (especially anything that cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines); accusing tech executives of ‘killing people’ for not adequately censoring so-called misinformation; and threatening to hold them accountable should they refuse to comply.
Judge Terrence Doughty ordered discovery at an early stage of litigation … For the first time, the public became aware of the Biden administration’s clandestine censorship operation, which began a mere three days after President Biden’s inauguration …
By February of 2021, then-White House Director of Digital Media Robert Flaherty had intensified the administration’s tactics … He began bullying companies — using expletives, wielding accusations, and making demands — in his efforts to get them to remove content that he claimed might cause people to decline vaccines …
On numerous occasions, Brian Rice and other Meta employees sent the White House detailed lists of agreed-upon policy changes after initial attempts to assuage Mr. Flaherty’s wrath proved unsuccessful.
On July 4 of this year, Judge Doughty granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction in Missouri, observing that ‘the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,’ and describing the administration’s censorship regime as akin to an ‘Orwellian Ministry of Truth.’
Crucial to the outcome was the court’s finding8 that the Biden administration and various federal executive agencies coerced, pressured, and encouraged social media companies to suppress First Amendment protected speech, converting otherwise private action into that of the state.
The core principle at issue, which forbids the government to co-opt private industry to circumvent constitutional prohibitions, is known as ‘state action doctrine.’ Without it, the Bill of Rights would be worthless.
Police could, for instance, hire a private company to search your home despite lacking probable cause, in order to get around the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless searches and seizures. Or the government could evade the guarantees of Equal Protection in the 14th Amendment by funding racially segregated private schools.
The judge agreed with the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden that … since the First Amendment prohibits government from abridging freedom of speech, the Constitution cannot be read to permit government to commandeer private companies to accomplish its viewpoint-based censorship aims.”
Direct Evidence of Coercion
While the initial evidence suggested the Biden administration was the driving force behind the media censorship, it was still circumstantial. That changed in late July 2023, when internal Meta documents were obtained by the Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.
According to Younes, “These documents tie the knot: They unequivocally establish that but for the Biden administration’s strong-arm tactics, certain viewpoints would not have been suppressed.”
For example, in a July 2021 email, Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, asked Brian Rice, who was in charge of Facebook’s content policy, why they had removed, rather than flagged or demoted, claims that SARS-CoV-2 was manmade.
Rice replied, “Because we were under pressure from the [Biden] administration and others to do more and it was part of the ‘more’ package.” He ended the email saying, “We shouldn’t have done it.”
“Not only did Rice explicitly state that pressure from the White House caused Meta to remove content endorsing the lab leak theory of COVID’s origins, he also expressed remorse for this decision.
These new documents also prove that the removal of ‘vaccine discouraging content’ occurred because of government pressure,” Younes writes.
Clegg, for example, told Andy Slavitt, former White House senior adviser for the COVID response, that removing humorous memes disparaging the COVID jab — as demanded by Slavitt — “would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the U.S.” Slavitt insisted and brushed off Clegg’s concerns as immaterial, and in the end, Clegg acquiesced to avoid potential retaliation.
Quid Pro Quo
Younes continues:9
“The White House’s coercive tactics had the desired effect. Both Clegg and [Meta COO Sheryl] Sandberg urged acquiescence to avoid adverse consequences. In Clegg’s words, ‘Sheryl is keen that we continue to explore some moves that we can make to show that we are trying to be responsive to the WH.’
He explained that the company’s ‘current course … is a recipe for protracted and increased acrimony with the WH as the vaccine roll out continues to stutter through the Fall and Winter. Given the bigger fish we have to fry with the Administration — data flows etc — that doesn’t seem a great place for us to be.’
Thus, ‘given what is at stake here, it would also be a good idea if we could regroup to take stock of where we are in our relations with the WH, and our internal methods too.’ The ‘data flow’ referenced a dispute Meta was having with the European Union at the time over transfer of users’ data. If resolved in favor of the EU, Meta could face significant fines.
As Twitter files journalist Michael Shellenberger and his co-authors recently explained in analyzing this exchange, ‘the series of events suggests a quid pro quo. Facebook would bow to White House requests for censorship in exchange for its help with the European Union.’”
First Amendment Seeks to Prevent Suppression of Dissent
As noted by Younes, President Biden had promised to make mass vaccination against COVID central to his agenda. The problem was, a great many Americans didn’t feel comfortable being injected with an experimental gene therapy that had no long-term safety data.
This was an impediment to Biden’s political agenda, and rather than acknowledging that the mass vaccination campaign was ill received, the White House simply scapegoated social media instead.
It was their fault that Americans weren’t rolling up their sleeves in sufficient numbers. Internal Meta emails attest to the fact that employees felt they were being used as scapegoats whenever the vaccination campaign wasn’t going as hoped.
“A government using its power to suppress dissent is precisely what the First Amendment sought to prevent,” Younes notes.
“‘Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved,’ Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers, famously wrote.
The first president of the United States, George Washington, once said, ‘If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.’
Let us hope that when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and probably the Supreme Court, consider these cases in the upcoming months, they interpret the First Amendment as the Constitution’s Framers understood it. Otherwise, the future of free speech, and liberty itself, is in grave danger.”
In closing, while Younes recognizes the terrible threat state-sponsored censorship poses, he doesn’t follow the breadcrumbs as far as Siegel does. Younes seems to believe the government censorship network came about to protect Biden’s political goals, but it’s way bigger than that.
Like Siegel states, the end goal is global control. To get there, those seeking that control must create a total stranglehold on all information, because that’s how you best control a population.
What’s more, this stranglehold is global. It’s not an American phenomenon that sprung up because Biden wanted to get a jab in every arm. COVID censorship is happening in every country, and every country needs to investigate what role, if any, their governments played in the suppression of truth.